Pvt schools face nursery admission delay

Dec 4, 2015

NEW DELHI: While the bills promising changes in the nursery admission system have cleared the assembly hurdle, they are still a few steps away from implementation. Meanwhile, there’s considerable confusion on the ground and, at least for some schools, fears of delay.

For starters, the changes may not be applicable from this year at all. “First they (government) will have to refer everything to the Centre and the changes will have to be approved by the President,” says S K Bhattacharya from the Action Committee for Unaided Recognized Private Schools. Till this is secured, he says, “we will go ahead with the existing system of fixing fees and conducting admissions. The directions prescribed by the high court will continue”.

The high court, in late 2014, nullified the December 2013 LG’s guidelines through which the government had sought to fix guidelines, criteria and points allocation centrally. The HC permitted unaided schools to decide their own guidelines and criteria for admissions and, consequently, private schools formulated their own admission systems for the 2015-16 session.

Ashok Pandey, principal, Ahlcon International School and chairperson of the National Progressive Schools’ Conference, agrees with Bhattacharya. “Passing of the bill per se doesn’t change things. As far as we are concerned, there are no changes unless the changes are notified.”

The Action Committee has already written to the President seeking his intervention. “I doubt the Centre will let these pass,” says Bhattacharya, “They may decide the constitutional procedures have not been followed. Firstly, education is not a state subject, but is in the concurrent list. The DSEA (Delhi School Education Act) 1973 is an act of Parliament and Delhi state doesn’t have the constitutional authority to amend it.”

Typically, the government frames guidelines by middle of December and the process has traditionally begun on January 1 — the January 2014 round excepted – but Pandey doesn’t “want to pre-empt anything”. “There is still time. We will wait for the government to notify changes,” says Pandey.

Delays, however, can cost schools. “We don’t want the admission process to be delayed. Most schools do it over the first 10 days of January – that is, during the winter vacation — when the staff are not engaged in regular school work,” says Tania Joshi, principal, The Indian School. “Principals are trying to find out what the criteria will be and there’s big confusion.”

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